This invention relates to apparatus or simultaneously reeling (sometimes called "winding") a plurality of ribbons, such as formed from a slit paper web, onto a spool. More particularly, it relates to a reel which incorporates a looped, traveling belt which cooperates with the spool and drive drum by functioning to receive and convey the plurality of paper ribbons and wrap them onto the spool for reeling them into a plurality of spaced apart rolls on the same spool.
A very specialized grade of paper is often used in greeting cards, diplomas, scrolls and the like wherein the edges of the sheet have a unique, feathered appearance. This feathered edge can only be produced by subjecting the paper web to a special water jet shower while the web is in a very wet and insufficiently formed condition on the fourdrinier wire just ahead of the couch roll in a papermaking machine. Usually, a plurality of such water jet showers slit the web into the desired number of ribbons, each having its edges formed thereby in the distinctive feathered style.
The necessity of having to slit the machine-wide web into a plurality of relatively narrow ribbons, each being perhaps 12 to 24 inches wide, before they are wound into a roll imposes a severe problem at the reel where the normally machine-wide web is wound up.
In the past, when these ribbons were received at the end of the machine for reeling into a roll of paper (actually a plurality of separate, narrow rolls), each separate paper ribbon had to be guided by hand onto the spool to be wound into a narrow roll of paper. This necessitated a great deal of time to hand guide each of the ribbons, which might number 4 to 10 on a relatively wide papermaking machine, onto the spool. Since these transfers had to be done by hand, the procedure required slowing the machine down to a speed where this could be accomplished by the men at the back of the machine.
This method of handling the plurality of ribbons was clearly inefficient and uneconomical, but no better way of accomplishing this transfer had heretofore been devised.
Besides the inefficiencies associated with running the machine at slow speed in order to hand start the ribbons on the spool, such handling was dangerous and caused a lot of paper to be recycled through the broke pit since some ribbons had to be running off the end of the machine while the operator was threading the other ribbons, one by one onto the spool.